On Snapchat, the student had posted a picture of a gun and a note that Tuesday was "Bring your gun to school day." The student initially told law enforcement he'd shared his password with friends so they must have done it.

Later, he fessed up, saying it was meant to be a joke.

That "joke" earned him a spot in the St. Lucie Regional Juvenile Detention Center in Fort Pierce, where he's charged with a felony for making a threat to conduct a mass shooting or act of terrorism.

It was the second such threat at a local school this year. In late August, a 13-year-old student allegedly sent an anonymous threat via social media: "At school at 11 o’clock, I’m pulling my gun this is a warning."

The student who got the threat posted it to another site and it began circulating. Parents got wind of it, and ultimately county dispatchers received more than 100 calls.

In recent weeks, students in Orange, Citrus, Broward and Okaloosa counties have been arrested and charged with making threats online. And that's just Florida.

How many of these threats were credible? In the post-Parkland era, it doesn't matter. Given that authorities missed so many of the red flags flying around alleged Parkland shooter Nikolas Cruz, no one can afford to take any chances.

But what, ultimately, will this require?

School and law enforcement officials stress the importance of talking to kids about the issue. Florida law makes it a second-degree felony to post shooting or terrorism threats online, even if it's intended as a joke.

Social media was the most common source of threats, with nearly two in five threats posted to Snapchat, Instagram or similar apps.

Accordingly, The New York Times reported last week that more than 100 public school districts and universities have hired social media monitoring companies. The companies comb through student posts, looking for trouble. But there's little evidence they've prevented threats of violence, bullying or self-harm.

Still, it's easy to understand the allure of this. School districts don't have the resources to monitor thousands of students' social media feeds.

But even if they did, should they? Doesn't this raise privacy questions? Doesn't it further expand the reach of the schools into private lives?

We're rapidly getting to the point where we have but two choices: 1) Turn schools into some combination of a surveillance state and armed camp; or 2) dial back on the paranoia — and perhaps miss the next mass shooter.

The best approach must lie somewhere in the middle. But when your phone rings on a Saturday morning and it's the principal telling you of a threat to your child's school, you don't want perspective. You want your kids to be safe.

We'll do what we have to ensure this. But one suspects that in the long run, whatever we may do can never be enough.